Margin Writing
by Meredith-Grey
Summary: She’d always been terrified that sex would be just another thing she wouldn’t get to experience, a language that she wouldn’t be able to decode. He wanted to be her dictionary. Season three Lit. Complete.
1. I Want To Be Your Dictionary

**Title:** _Margin Writing_

**Rating:** _M, for innuendos and language_

**Date Started:** _2-16-07_

**Date Finished: **_3-23-08_

**Disclaimer**_ I don't own Gilmore Girls, or anything written by Emily Bronte, although I wish I had her brilliance._

**Summary:** _She'd always been terrified that sex would be just another thing she wouldn't get to experience, a language that she wouldn't be able to decode. He wanted to be her dictionary._

**A/N:** _This piece is somewhat autobiographical. I read WH at the age of thirteen and it's something that I could imagine Jess doing out of curiosity, since it is in his nature. Just something I came up with. Reviews would be greatly appreciated._

When he was thirteen he tried to read _Wuthering Heights_. He'd seen a weather worn, leather bound copy in the Rare Books Room at the New York Library, the author listed under Ellis Bell. It was a strange, old-fashioned name, and one he'd never heard of. He did a search on the library's computer only to find out that it was, in fact, a pen name. The real author being someone more familiar that he had encountered before in his literary adventures, the sister from the family of writers, Emily Bronte.

Jess decided to forgo the library itself, which was bound to have many copies, and purchase one for himself. This was something he had fallen custom to. He didn't like his books sealed in plastic.

It only cost him fifty cents at a used bookstore four blocks from his apartment. The cover depicted a dark, rolling landscape of wetness and bluish fervor. He found it oddly compelling. Jess had never read of a place with that kind of desolate, uninhabited, wind channeled, stone-ish green gray landscape. He later learned a name for the Yorkshire backdrop that had been used by Bronte as a mood-like inspiration: The Moors.

Initially he felt severe confusion with the writing itself. In years past he had snubbed the classics in favor of more fast-paced contemporary novels and the old English vernacular baffled him with it's nettles and abstracting one's mind and all other sorts of proper rubbish. He took a pen to the pages to underline these words, the ones he didn't understand, and looked them up as he read, creating a mental list of his expanding vocabulary. As the story progressed he began to write more than just markings for phrases that conquered his perception, but thoughts as well. The more he read the more strongly he felt. Heathcliff, Catherine, Isabella, Edgar, Nelly, they were all tools in cloths covering. The plot left much to be desired by Jess who, throughout the course of the story, felt compelled to deeply despise Catherine's character.

Certain passages stood out to him more distinctly than others, one of those being Catherine's stay with the Linton's and her metamorphosis and eventual abandonment of Heathcliff. Jess found it odd that many people found Heathcliff evil. Wasn't Catherine the one to dislike? After all, she married a man with wealth and a dandy disposition when there was another—someone closer to her—that loved her deeply. Love being Heathcliff's main redeeming quality. In the margins of the yellowed paper back Jess scribbled heatedly. _Why_, he repeated the thoughts of his mind, _why do people behave so stupidly?_

He found the ending realistic. Heathcliff's jealousy and revenge made him human, an unhappy ending worthy of its dramatic foundations. United in death and future generations, Catherine's daughter and Heathcliff's son eventually married. Jess chalked the novel up to a string of hopeful tragedy.

**I.**

When Jess was seventeen, he re-read _Howl _for the fortieth time.

He'd grown much better at writing by then. He no longer underlined words that he didn't understand but ones that he liked, phrases that caught his attention. His thoughts about literature had taken on a more experienced viewpoint; he found it easier to understand the psychology of imaginary people and how they behaved.

She'd been surprised with his subtle acknowledgement of their overlapping tastes. Years later he would come to realize that if it hadn't been for that pocket-sized volume their relationship would have played out quite differently.

**II.**

The more he was around her the more he wanted to know. She was like a good book, easily opened and indefinably interesting.

He was burning to spell it out for her, to write his desires along the inside of her thighs, the sweet curve of her neck, the untouched expanse of her back. She was like a cloaked exclamation mark, one of those sheltered small town girls that were dying to feel life beyond syntax. She'd always been terrified that sex would be just another thing she wouldn't get to experience, a language that she wouldn't be able to decode.

He wanted to be her dictionary.

It's simple really, he'd tell her, you spell out what you're looking for. Open up, I'll show you what to do; I'll show you how to get what you want.

He'd be her Spark Notes, the teenage lexicon of fucking. _ Let me write in your margins._

**III.**

He wrote her lists of words that he liked. When she asked to see all of them, to see his notebook penned with swooping cursive and cramped definitions, he didn't hesitate to hand it over. He knew it was the kind of neurotic thing that she probably did herself.

Jess had never been able to understand Rory's freakish organizational skills. She put her notes behind one tab and her worksheets behind another while her homework went in a different spot from all her tests and quizzes. She had a portable hole puncher and her own pencil sharpener and three different kinds of pens. Her preference towards variety made itself apparent early on in their undefined relationship.

"Bivouac," that one made her giggle. "Hypotenuse, intermezzo, drub, sortie, zenith . . . "

"People should bring these up more in conversation."

He tore his eyes away from a copy of _Jane Eyre_ that she had on her nightstand, closed, but marked.

He lay on her bedroom floor with his ankles crossed toward the dresser. She rested next to him but faced the opposite direction. Only their arms touched now and again.

She was burning to turn on her side and get a good look at him, but there was an unspoken rule that hung above their heads like a sheen of protection. A translucent membrane that distorted her rational and made her slippery like a dissolving liquid. She wanted to know what he knew. Her age held her in ignorance.

She wanted to comb through the thick waves of his hair. _Touch me look at me. I want, I want, I want, tell me that I'm not supposed to want._ She was so inexperienced she didn't know how to ask. Maybe one day he'd ask for her.

**IV.**

He refused to play the Romeo to her Rosalind or the Heathcliff to her Catherine. He wasn't the type of boy to simper and follow a girl around, dejected and begging. Real love stories didn't work like that. He was old enough to understand that sometimes books had a tendency to lie.

It was beginning to dawn on her, all the paper-fed bullshit that his presence had begun to cancel out. He brought her close to reality, skimming its edges with the words he wrote inside the covers of her books.

She had already grown tired of Dean and her anxious shot at perfection. Initially, her feelings for him were an extension of flattery. For years Rory had felt like a human sub-species. Until the age of sixteen she'd felt separate from girls and blatantly ignored by boys; when Dean had pursued her affections she had finally felt legitimized. The root of her fear, that there was something deeply wrong with her and that some day she would be found out, was now abolished. There _wasn't_ anything wrong with her, she _was_ normal.

But the idea that Jess would be interested in her seemed unimaginable. She was nothing compared to the girls she knew he had been with before his arrival in Stars Hollow. Rory could see it in the way he looked at her and at everything around him. His intense gaze unnerved her confidence. She got the realistic impression that he knew everything she was hiding, including the parts that were concealed beneath her clothes. He had done more, lived more, than she would ever be allowed. When she thought of Jess she felt an innate curiosity and the silken dregs of jealousy. She hated him for understanding things that she would never get to experience, but she wanted him regardless.

And there it was, the big, terrible secret that she was only brave enough to write about. The guilty fantasies of a bastard daughter penned almost prudishly in her journal. What she'd never tell Lorelai, her own contempt for her self-inflicted loneliness.

She just wanted to be touched. By him, of him, beneath him. The weight of her status had never felt so deeply and impairingly heavy.

**V.**

In the sticky sweet humidity of the early summer months, Rory was experiencing a strong surge of tunnel vision. Seven days ago she had cut the lines of her support, mainly, Dean. Lorelai hadn't been all that surprised, but Rory could still feel the few shivers of disappointment that her mother worked very hard to conceal. It was obvious to everyone, her mother especially, what her new freedom would mean. She had made her decision months before; in fact, it had been almost a year. She wanted Jess, she was going to have him, and she would do so shamelessly.

**VI.**

He'd gotten the note perhaps a day after he'd heard of her breakup with Dean. The actions came in a swift, almost simultaneous correlation. Part of him expected to be ignored while another more realistic part of his conscience knew what she was doing, the part that could read her like a novel outline. There was no return address on the envelope and the note itself was short, Spartan in its use of words.

Upon first inspection he thought the page to be blank, but midway down the lined paper he saw the neat little collection of words: _Catherine is dead._

**VII.**

Catherine died too late.

It was her fault; she was mature enough to admit the truth to herself. It had taken her over a year to realize what she already knew, that Jess wouldn't take her actions lying down, that she would never be able to have safety and intellect at once, that she had been kidding herself with her empty promises.

Three days. Three long, uneventful days in which she did nothing save flipping through books she couldn't concentrate on. The heat pressed down on her like a muffled blanket, summer and the quiet whizzing of her brain as it cooled from the strenuous workload that she no longer had to accommodate. Chilton was over and college seemed far, far away in autumn, eons from where she stood.

She'd found a book on her window seal, the glass pane propped up from the wooden ledge with a hardback copy of _Wuthering Heights_. It looked new, and would have been considered such in most circles, but when she flipped the front cover open Rory saw that it's pages had been embellished with stereotypical Jess-like obsession.

On the cream colored inside cover he'd scrawled a note in his loopy script, the pitch ink smudged in some places where he had written it in a great hurry.

_Rory,_

_This is my big gesture. Actually, it's more like a buffet for the painful gesture that you're about to discover, and I just wanted you to have this. In a few minutes you're going to feel tricked and deceived and you may resolve to forget me completely so I thought it'd be nice to leave you with something to read, you know, so you wouldn't get bored. _

_I'm leaving, but you probably already guessed that. You're going to want an explanation—and you deserve one—but I think we both know why I'm doing this. If I'm right, which I know I am, we will see each other again. Don't think of this as abandonment. I'm grasping at straws here Rory, you know me, you know what I'm trying to say. _

_I will write you again, that is, if you want me to. _

_-Jess_

_PS: We won't mourn her loss._

She inspected the margins of the book only to find his list of words. Comments were scribbled between lines of text; tinny sketches of the Moorish landscape adorned the lower margins of various passages. On the last page he'd left her a critical character analysis of both Heathcliff and Catherine. It was all addressed to her, every note or mark written in first person.

Every_ You _and_ I_ felt like a cancerous string of connection. In the dichotomy of her misery Rory relished in this connection, her attachment to him and his words, and despised it. Jess leaving her was another example of the undeniable anti-climax that she ensued in men. Every time she thought of herself with someone else, in a relationship or otherwise, she blanched, frowned, pushed the thoughts away. It was ridiculous that anyone would want her, _really_ want her. Dean's intentions had been to own her, not treat her as an equal partner. And Jess, the boy she had almost set her hopes on, he had fooled her into thinking somewhat normally about herself. So there it was, the truth that no book would ever explain to her. Love was nothing more than deception.

**VIII.**

And so she went to Europe. She bantered with her mother and went shopping in Milan and threw a few coins into the Rein River for good luck. She rushed through an entire continent and rushed on to Yale and focused, on nothing, on the future, all of it so she wouldn't have to bother with the present.

And the letters came. From Jess, pages of what he was doing in California, the explanation that he had promised her, written like an atonement to a serious crime. The things he wrote made her feel small and weepy. Her replies were always shy and disjointed, like she was unsure of how to express herself. With thousands of miles between them it was easy for her to privately admit that she was in love with him. Distance was like protection for her feelings. On paper she wasn't granted this honesty.

**IX.**

Autumn had always been her preferred season. She loved crisp apples and freshly sharpened pencils with golden leaves crunching beneath her shoes. The cool weather gave Rory the company of books and sweaters and coffee, none of it sustained her completely, but it gave her the feeling of being at home.

The altered seasons served as a time-marker, a reminder of the extending weeks between letters. She felt a little helpless when it came to Jess; she was used to being in control of things and following a straight order. But Jess was the anti-thesis of order and the only one in control: of her feelings, of their relationship, of what she wanted. He had always been too much of his own person to give into her completely.

In one such letter she'd asked the unwritten only to neatly cross it out, discredited with a thin, inky line through her question. She was afraid to actually receive a reply but still inevitably curious. The sentence wasn't blotted out. She'd left it fairly visible, it's contents negated almost coyly.

In ballpoint pen, scrawled on notebook paper, she had asked: W_hen will you be home?_

**X.**

It was snowing, lightly, gray and colorless in the early evening. Her door had been unlocked, a sign that he'd regarded as positive, even if only slightly.

Rory's meager dorm room was small but cheerful, quite similar to how he'd imagined it from her letters. She wasn't home, but he'd expected that. It was only four o'clock, early by his nocturnal standards.

He didn't want to sit on her couch in case . . . well, in case she didn't want him there. It was mid-November and they hadn't seen each other since early June. The light filtering through the windows was dying. The doorknob turned.

Her books fell onto the floor, Chaucer, Kafka, Tolstoy, all her favorites spread over the carpet in surprise. She didn't look at them. Her expression was unbelieving.

He used his shoulders to push off the wall, approaching her carefully. Just standing, sizing each other up, hanging on pretence. The air was thicker than the snow on her window ledge.

"Hello, Catherine."

**Fin**

**A/N:** _If anyone is interested in seeing this as a two-parter just leave me a review. I'd really appreciate the feedback._


	2. Vertigo

**Title: **_Margin Writing  
_

**Rating: **_M_

**Date Started: **_4-5-08_

**Date Finished: **_4-13-08_

**Disclaimer:** _I don't own Gilmore Girls. It all belongs to Amy Sherman-Palladino and the folks at the WB. The title is in no way affiliated with the song by U2_

**Summary:** _A reeling sensation; a feeling that you are about to fall. Rory. Jess. Post California. Sequel to Margin Writing._

**A/N:** _I think this will set better as a second chapter rather than a sequel. Please review after reading._

**Chapter Two: Vertigo**

Her eyes were wide and almond shaped, like twin robins eggs, floating on the creamy porcelain surface of her skin. He swallowed, habits emerging out of nervousness, the level plane to which he had grounded himself was now defunct. Reeling, Jess did what came most unnaturally to him, he looked her in the eye.

"I . . . " She started, taking a small step and then retreating. Almost a half-step.

He felt his jaw clench and unclench. Tight and then relaxed. Jess held his hands in his pockets, unsure of what to do with them. The air was thick with hand-written promises, conversations that could have stretched days but only graced pages.

"I missed you."

Her full, pink mouth had opened up and completed her earlier statement. He felt his body soften, adrenalin lapping at his fingertips while branches of possibility sprang from her words.

Jess's expression was strong and subtle, small flecks of gold peaking out behind the warm brown of his eyes. He could see past all her surprise and foolishness.

Dizziness. His chest tightened, suffocated by the words he wanted to show her. What would be an adequate response? I missed you too? You're beautiful? _I couldn't stop thinking about you while I was away–I need you–I want you to be with me–I want you to love me–I love you and you alone–_

A tear slid down her cheek, followed soundlessly by another. Silence. A gesture they both understood.

"C'mere."

She surrendered, miserably, literally, physically. "Jess." He stoked her hair, pulled her shivering body into his like a wolf claiming it's mate. Self-conscious in every situation, Rory pressed her face into the fabric of his clothes. She was ugly when she cried.

**I.**

He liked to think alone. Perhaps it was a side-effect of growing up in a city of noise and chaos, but Jess took solace in bouts of self-imposed loneliness. It was sort of a coping process. In every flare up of his moods or his anger he could sense his weak spot; after eighteen years he was well-versed in vulnerability.

California was a blinding mix of wayward alternatives and sickening reality. When he'd been younger Jess had made up lies about his father. When people asked about his dad he would tell them something different every time. That his dad was dead, that he was a spy for the government, and–at the impressionable age of eight–he had once claimed that his father was a gangster.

In hindsight Jess saw his earlier actions as his first form of storytelling. Lies. Word of his deception rarely made it's way back to his mother. Liz was a separate entity from her son, moving in the opposite directions from the being she had created. What did young girls do when they had boys? Play dad? Replace what wouldn't fit? Husbands one, two, three, and almost four did little to curb Jess's obvious hunger for change. The older he got the more deceived he felt.

Half was still half, no matter what age. To Jess, a teenager in a city of ageless strangers, every deal felt raw and pre-meditated. Every fight and every insult and every shitty thing that happened to him felt like a personal Fuck You from the unseen Control Freak that was God. Fuck You for trying. Fuck You for expecting. Fuck You for believing when you knew otherwise.

With Rory on the other side of the continent he was able to look at his life realistically. The Pacific sun blanketed his movements as Jess stood still and transparent next to his father.

The water was frothy and blue from reflection, highlighted by crashing white caps that curved and melted into the sea. He felt small and dominated by nature.

The only words he understood where the ones he wrote himself. Every letter was composed with a clear stream of narration; writing got to be easy, easier than stringing thoughts together on their own. Jess would speak to her through landscapes of relationships, he would paint the dynamic that was emerging between him and his father. Everything penned like a quasi confession. For Jess, making up his losses was misery, a process that burned with dishonesty and a sense of irreconcilable damages.

**II.**

"Can I . . . ?" He reached to take her hand. They sat on her little twin bed in her shared dorm room, it's cubicle-like floor-plan was easily disguised with books and other academic paraphernalia. Rory smiled in spite of herself, slightly embarrassed by her scene before.

Her hand covered his. "Jess, you don't have to ask. I mean, I thought you knew about, oh jeez," she was nervous and largely terrified of being rejected after months of waiting and over a year of guilty truths. She glanced away from his face.

Jess tried to keep his tone neutral but calming. "You mean," he started, "you mean you still want–"

"Yes."

Rory's voice was small, quiet and explorative. She looked up at him through her lashes.

Soberly, Jess laced their hands together. "Ok."

**III.**

Jimmy kicked a weathered stone over the cliff-face, both men losing track of it's decent into the tumultuous ocean. Beside him, Jess kept his distance from the edge but maintained his cool; the wind skipped off the waters surface, working it's way into Jess's hair and throwing it away from his face.

"If I pushed you in, would you swim?"

Jess remained passive, his face a patched mask of indifference; he had grown accustomed to Jimmy's off-base interrogations. Ever since his arrival in Venice Beach his medically-bound "father" had attempted to get the feel of his personality. Jess felt apprehensive about the close scrutiny but refrained from commenting. If Jimmy felt the need to subject his long lost son to disguised analysis, Jess had no room to protest.

"It's not like I'd have much choice."

"You know how to swim?"

Those kinds of questions had initially grated on Jess's nerves but he grew to numb his annoyances. Holding a grudge against his father–for abandoning him, for never taking the time to observe these discoveries as they occurred–would be the anti-thesis of his current goal: to make amends with his past.

"Yeah, I can swim."

The pair walked down to the beach in amiable silence. The Redwoods towered over them, casting a cool blanket of shade over father and son as they traipsed through the maritime forests of Northern California. The drive had been long and sticky with heat, minus the humidity that Jess knew intimately from his time on the East Coast. It was a break from Los Angeles, one of the last official weekends of summer before students from UCLA would start up classes, before Lily timidly entered the third grade, and before Jess felt like he was really losing time.

Jimmy sat at the base of a towering Redwood. "Who do you write to all the time?"

Jess imitated his action. "A friend of mine."

"Just the one?"

He tore a blade of grass, letting the pieces fall between his fingers. "Yes. Her name's Rory."

"You're writing letters to a girl who lives across the country, in a state you despise. Any story behind that?"

Normally he would have told Jimmy to lay off the twenty questions, most likely delivering his grievances with an attitude or an indifferent expression. But he was grasping at straws, turning and figuring a way to piece together what he wanted with the means to secure it. There were promises he'd made to Rory that he intended to make good on, things he understood in theory alone.

"Please don't say it's a long story."

Jess arched one of his fine dark eyebrows. "Well, if you insist . . . it's more than long. I don't even know how to explain it orally. I feel like I'm in one of those old-English tragedy-fated love stories where happiness is reached in the second generation while the first suffers in an unmarked grave somewhere . . . "

"So write it down."

Jimmy slept, Jess smoked; the Earth spun on it's axis while more rocks fell into the sea.

**IV.**

"It's a book." Rory flipped through the ink-stained college ruled pages. "This is amazing."

"Technically, it's a notebook." Jess toyed with a strand of her hair, watching serenely while Rory's expression went from awe to intrigue.

"I can't believe you're writing. I mean, this is, actually I _can_ believe you're writing. Oh, I bet it's really good. You're probably a great writer–"

"Well maybe you should go to the beginning," he turned the pages for her, "and see for yourself."

She smiled, all soft lips and apple cheeks. "Thank you for letting me, you know, read this."

"You're welcome."

Her face lit up like a flame, dancing, colored with wonder, her cheeks tinged with a faint pink blush. He felt loose and relaxed, sedated before the final injection, feather light before the fall.

**V.**

He slept with his face buried in her hair. Her bed was small, twin sized and not made for two people, but they managed. The curved slope of her back was pressed against his torso, the back of his hand lightly brushing the underside of her breast while his arm encircled her waist. He couldn't bring himself to remove his clothing in front of Rory, not when they'd never even kissed–save once, over a year ago, an occasion that was savored but forgotten for both their sakes.

Far away on the arid coastline of California, he'd thought about her, about how different she was from the blond bikini girls that littered the beaches and the boardwalk. Rory, with her dark silken hair, her face like a Rembrandt painting.

Whenever he looked at her he saw damp lace, it's form softening with moisture and age; the Bronte sisters, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath.

_A reeling sensation; a feeling that you are about to fall– _

Love.

It was more than sex–a need that surpassed and transgressed and took a shape of it's own–all that he wanted from her. With her body tucked into his, arms soft and curved but still defined, he could think clearly–pointedly–his mind diffusing through what was now and what was past. It was the crescendo, a true resolve, they had reached the final score.

**VI.**

Rory gulped down her glass of water, her mouth suddenly dry and tinged with nervousness while Jess dug around behind his bookcase. His apartment was small but not uncomfortably so. Two rooms mainly, a bedroom–it's presence visible through marred French doors–and a general living area: a couch, books stacked in a corner on second-hand shelves, a desk that bore signs of his writing, and a small kitchenette that she supposed he rarely used.

"Ah, here it is."

He made his way back over to the couch, holding a definite rectangle wrapped in cloth.

"I hid it. If this thing got lifted from my apartment I'd never forgive myself"

She watched, wide eyed and expectant, as Jess uncovered the faded spine of an archaic book. The side was black–now a charcoal gray due to age–and labeled in fine, gold print: _Wuthering Heights._

Rory touched it's battered cover, the fabric that had once been green was now a strange cross between yellow and decay. "I wouldn't suggest writing in this one."

Jess gave a half-smile. "I found it in a throw-away box at a used bookstore. It only cost me three dollars. Crazy woman didn't know what she was selling."

Checking the title page, Rory's eyes widened at the sight of Emily Bronte's pseudonym. "How old is this?"

Jess answered while Rory flicked through the pages. "I got it checked out, and apparently it's a first edition. It's not in the best condition," he admitted, "but it's still worth a ridiculous amount."

"You're selling it?"

He scoffed. "'Course not."

"Good."

**VII.**

"You nervous?"

_Yes._ "A little."

He chuckled, running the pads of his fingers over her flat stomach. "You are."

She quivered beneath his touch, her hair spread around her like a sunflower. "Maybe."

Rory sat up slightly so Jess could remove her bra, "Don't be."

It had been a slow seduction, spanning the length of years and states and circumstances. Jess let the straps fall from her shoulders, kissing her hungrily.

He had fallen into a state of mind that had lasted many months, a point in which he had doubted everything. His worth, Rory's feelings toward him, even the prospect of success that he had formally expected. In that period he saw Rory as unattainable, her virginity like a shield.

"Jess," she whimpered, dragging blunt nails across his scalp, pulling him fully on top of her.

He traced the line of her femininity with his mouth, "Yes Rory?" His voice was eerily calm compared to hers. His hand was between her legs, cupping her over the thin fabric of her panties, just holding her.

She squired. "Please, just . . . "

He cupped her breasts, her spine curving like a rod of hot metal. "Patience, Rory. Be patient."

Her chest rose and fell in sharp little intakes of breath. The gap between her legs was widening on instinct. He pressed his weight against her, enough to ease some of her tension but not so much that it pained her. She moaned with every trace of contact; the space being filled, her hollow emptiness soft and slick at the edges, the blossom of virginal lips–

_May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me, then._

**Fin.**

**A/N:** _This is the end. I hope all of you enjoyed reading Margin Writing. Reviews are always appreciated. _


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